The All-New Jetpack: Let’s See How You React

Posted on August 31, 2016 by Carolyn S.

Jetpack 4.3 is coming out next week! It’s the culmination of thousands of hours of work from dozens of talented engineers and designers. The Jetpack admin interface has been completely rethought and rebuilt from the ground up using the React.js JavaScript library.

At Automattic, we firmly believe that JavaScript is the future of WordPress, so we worked hard to showcase the power and beauty of a JavaScript-driven design within your WordPress Dashboard.

Continue reading → The All-New Jetpack: Let’s See How You React

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Testers Needed: Jetpack Plugin Browser

Posted on September 21, 2015 by Carolyn S.

While our Jetpack development team has been hard at work keeping your Jetpacks fueled up and ready for action – our developers over on WordPress.com have been busy too!

You may already be familiar with the great Jetpack features that utilize the WordPress.com interface: the ability to update your plugins across multiple sites with a single click, being able to view enhanced stats about your site, write new and update existing posts and pages with a beautiful editor, and more.

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Now, there’s even more new things to try!

Over on the WordPress.com Horizon, where the makers of WordPress.com test upcoming changes and new features with the WordPress.com community, there’s a call for testers for a new addition to the Jetpack management features on WordPress.com.

They’re currently looking for testers with Jetpack sites to test the new Plugin Browser feature.

The Plugin Browser lets you find and install plugins from the WordPress.org plugin directory. You can search for keywords or browse within Featured, New and Popular categories. If you’ve got plugins on your site that you no longer need, then this update also lets you remove (delete) those plugins from your sites. You can still activate/deactivate plugins, and turn on (or off) auto-updates as well.

As part of the plugin browser project they have added more details to the single plugin view, which now serves reviews and ratings from the WordPress community, as well as the full description, changelog and other information specified by the plugin author.

“That’s great – how can I help?” you might ask.

Simple! There’s a post on the Horizon Feedback blog with all the details you may need including what to test, how to test, and how to submit feedback to the WordPress.com development team.

The Plugin Browser will be open for feedback through September 28th – so head on over to the Horizon post and get a sneak peek at this great new feature.

Thank you so much if you take the time to test. We appreciate it!

Posted in Contribute, Jetpack News | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

New: Beta Testing Jetpack

Posted on June 23, 2015 by Carolyn S.

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WordPress is an Open Source project built and maintained by members of the community. While Jetpack is built by the fine folks of Automattic to port features from WordPress.com to self-hosted sites, we embrace the same open source spirit by hosting its plugin source code and development publicly on GitHub. We’ve done a lot of great things so far, and we can do much more with your help!

How can you help? Join our newly relaunched Beta program!

As part of our Beta program, you help shape the future of the Jetpack plugin. The Beta program is 100% open to the public and we’re excited to get the WordPress and Jetpack user community involved.

As a Beta tester, you’ll get a sneak peek at new features and be one of the first to try them out. You’ll also help us track down any bugs and other issues, and even suggest tweaks or improvements to existing features. We have a few surprises up our sleeves for our testers as well! 🙂

You don’t need to be a developer, or even need to know how to code to participate – if you use WordPress and Jetpack, you can be a Beta tester.

Learn more about our awesome new Beta program by visiting the Jetpack Beta page. You can also help by spreading the word on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks.

Ready? Sign up now!

If you have questions about the Beta program or contributing to Jetpack in general, please comment or contact us. And if you’re unsure about joining us as Beta tester, there are lots of other ways to contribute to the Jetpack community.

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Interview: Andrea Barghigiani on Jetpack

Posted on August 6, 2014 by Richard

Andrea is a long-time WordPress user and runs the popular WordPress blog wpAndMore aimed at Italian WP users and developers. We got in touch with him recently to find out what he thinks about our Jetpack plugin. Andrea lives in Italy and can be found on Twitter @Andrea_AndMore.

 

Who is Andrea?

Andrea

What do you do for a living?

For the last five years I’ve been developing WordPress themes and plugins. Recently I began to teach other people how to develop with this platform via articles and video tutorials on wpAndMore.info.

What’s the best thing about your job?

In a nutshell, that I can use WordPress to satisfy the requests of my clients 🙂

How did you first start using WordPress?

I’ve been using WordPress since version 2.7. At the time I was looking for a framework/platform able to help me speed up my develop process and give more power to my clients – WordPress was the best fit.

 

Thoughts on Jetpack

How’d you first find out about Jetpack?

I always keep myself always updated about WordPress news and I think I read about it on the WPTavern blog (even if I can’t be so sure!). Since then I’ve installed it on more than ten WordPress sites.

What’s the one Jetpack feature you couldn’t do without? Why?

My favourite is the Related Posts feature. I like it because it decreases my bounce rate (I can show more articles to my hungry readers when they finish reading one post) and because it does not stress my server in doing so.

What do you think of the the Jetpack setup process: Easy, hard?

The setup process is very simple, all you need is a WordPress.com account and you’re ready to go!

What do you value about Jetpack?

Based on the kind of site, Jetpack helps me in many ways. First and foremost it helps me keep my installations more organized and streamlined, since I have to install less plugins. Jetpack also helps me run the sites even faster with the CDN options (Photon) that it provides.

 

Working with Clients

Do you generally recommend Jetpack?

Well, looking at the latest improvements, in my opinion Jetpack is a must-have plugin. The various features improve our WordPress installations in many ways, starting from the social aspect (like the social buttons or the amazing Publicize feature) to the more text based ones (like LaTeX and the After the Deadline integration).

Does Jetpack help you with client work?

Sure! Unsurprisingly, my clients are usually happy to install something for free that will give them loads of features. Photon, Carousel and Tiled Galleries are always welcomed by them and the social feature integrations I mentioned previously are very useful in helping them with promoting their sites and content.

 

Jetpack Frustrations

What frustrates you about Jetpack? Why?

If I have to be honest, the only thing it frustrates me is right after install. By default Jetpack activates several modules that I do not need and I have to disable them one by one each time I install it. But I mean, it’s not a big deal 😉

What would you like to improve?

Apart from the above (ie: letting me activate only the modules I need) I’d love it if you could implement a bit of AJAX technology, so I do not have to refresh the page each time I activate or deactivate a module.

 

Get involved!

Try it out

If you’ve not used Jetpack before, read our step-by-step installation guide here to try it out for yourself.

Contribute

If you are a Jetpack user already please tell us what you think in the comments and, if you’d like to get involved yourself by writing a guest post about Jetpack or being interviewed yourself, get in touch!

Posted in Contribute | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

Make Sure Your Functions Function: Unit Testing

Posted on August 20, 2013 by Ben Lobaugh (blobaugh)

Hopefully you’ve checked out our new contributor guide and you’re ready to submit your first patch — thanks! But before you send your .diff out into the world, run a unit test to make sure everything’s working as it should.

Continue reading → Make Sure Your Functions Function: Unit Testing

Posted in Contribute, Tips & Tricks | Tagged , | 1 Comment

How to write a great bug report

Posted on November 18, 2011 by Scott Berkun

We know you don’t like bugs. We don’t like them either. But as they’re an unavoidable part of software, it’d be good for us to share how best to report issues to us to speed things along.

In short, here’s a great rule: If we can’t reproduce the bug, we can’t fix the bug.

When you report a bug to us, here’s what happens:

  1. We read the bug report
  2. One of us tries to reproduce the bug
  3. If we can reproduce it, we investigate what’s broken and fix it.
  4. But if we can’t reproduce the bug…

Often bug reports don’t include enough information. This means we have go back and ask for details so we can investigate. If you want to increase the odds we fix an issue, and fix it fast, help us out.

A great bug report includes the following:

  1. What were you trying to do?
  2. What did you click on or do last?
  3. What happened / what did you see?
  4. What browser are you using?
  5. What version of WordPress?
  6. What hosting provider? (And if you know, what version of PHP do they use?)
  7. The bug is reported to the right place (For Jetpack, Go here)

You don’t need to be verbose. A sentence for each is often just fine.  And bug reports that show screenshots for #3 are incredibly useful, as we can see exactly what you saw.

Bonus points for reviewing known issues before submitting, as your problem might already have been reported, and have a patch or a workaround (For Jetpack, known issues are listed here).

We work hard to have you deal with as few issues as possible, but if you want to improve the odds we can fix your issue fast, please take a extra minute to write a bug report that’s easier for us to use.  Thanks.

Posted in Contribute | Tagged , | 13 Comments

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